Japan Makers Vying to Develop “Edge Computing” Technologies

May 9, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese manufacturers are vying to develop "edge computing" technologies in order to improve production efficiency by utilizing Internet of things, or IoT, devices.

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and machine tool maker Fanuc Corp. have formed consortiums respectively to unify standards and develop products for edge computing, a concept designed to make up for shortcomings of cloud computing.

In edge computing, artificial intelligence systems on local computers constantly analyze in real time data from industrial robots, monitoring cameras and other connected IoT devices in factories.

Edge computing makes it easier to build more efficient work processes that fit the realities at factories than cloud computing, which processes vast amounts of data from various sources stored on the Internet.

With edge computing, glitches and other problems at factories can be promptly handled. Communication costs and data leakage risks can be also curbed as only selected data are sent to the cloud.

In November last year, Mitsubishi Electric formed a consortium with IBM Japan Ltd. and other companies to unify data standards in order to facilitate joint development of edge computing-related products and services. This month, the group started running software for data utilization.

Fanuc has joined hands with some 470 companies to promote its platform to make production more efficient through edge computing.

In April, Fanuc and a startup born out of the University of Tokyo jointly developed software for the platform that enables AI systems to learn on its own how to operate robots efficiently.

"Companies are beginning to change their thinking, trying to move away from the practice of throwing all kinds of data into the cloud," said Kaoru Yoshida, a senior consultant at Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc..

Yoshida said the combined use of edge and cloud computing is expected to increase. Jiji Press